Seasonally Multi-Purposed

This year, as canning season is progressing, I've realized something that had apparently eluded me until now.  Not only are there growing seasons, a season for kidding, bottle calves, etc.  There is a season for many of the accessories to homesteading as well.  I've now filled all the pint jars, and although I'm certainly not complaining, there is still salsa to make!  What I did discover after canning yesterday, is, the drinking glasses are now at a minimum.  I use fruit jars for drinking glasses, as I empty them through the winter.  It's just easier storage, I guess, and they are pretty durable.  There are a few jars that I gain along the way that do not fit canning lids, so I keep a few of them on hand for making container candles for the greenhouse in the winter, or beverage containers until some of the fruit jars are empty again.

The root cellar is also one of those seasonal things.  When I moved to this homestead, I wanted a root cellar. I knew I could not do it myself, but checking prices, really set me back on that plan.  In all my checking, there were the bids for digging, then the bids for building with blocks or cement, then the covering . . . That's when I realized storm shelters came as a package deal, and much less expensive than any one of the bids I'd received for just their portion of the plan.  Being the frugal person I am, I made a pretty simple decision.  I chose the storm shelter.  In one day, at a fraction of the bid prices, it was all complete!  He even filled in a couple of ruts where my fencer had sunk his Dodge Ram up to the axils, earlier that year.  He got the pickup pulled out, but the ruts were deep.  Anyway, back to the storm shelter.  About four to five feet of it is below the frost line, so it is lined with shelves for canned goods.  The center has plenty of room for baskets of potatoes and onions through the winter, when severe wind storms are at a minimum.

Of course, I get the same question from my mother, several times a year as to whether there is room to take shelter there since I'm using it to store the canned goods.  She thinks I should be freezing all my preserved food.  Seasonally speaking, by the time the severe weather season has arrived in this area, the stored food for the winter has diminished greatly, so there's more room . . .

Homesteading has proven to be so perpetually seasonal in so many areas.  Even the dormancy of winter has proven to balance the workload.  Chopping ice on the water tanks is work.  So much so, I prayed about it last year, regarding Shabbat . . .  The two months in which ice is prevalent are the two months I don't milk, awaiting the new kid crop.  The kids tend to arrive after the bitter harshness of winter and before the planting begins.  Meanwhile for now, it's canning season, so if you come to visit, I may put you to work . . . and you may have to drink out of one of the jars that a canning lid won't fit.